


Salvation or Condemnation

by laireshi



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Incest, M/M, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 12:27:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20275909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/pseuds/laireshi
Summary: “What do you want from me?” V asks.Dante shrugs. “You tell me. We’re in your dream,Vergil.”





	Salvation or Condemnation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neonthrones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neonthrones/gifts).

> Thanks <3

V walks through a field of poppies, the sky over him dark, promising a storm to ruin the delicate flowers around him.

“This is a dream,” he says to himself when he realises he’s walking without the aid of his cane, unhindered by pain and exhaustion that’s become as familiar to him as a black armour had once been, ever-present chains.

“Stating the obvious now, brother?” Dante asks.

V swirls around, and sure enough, Dante is there, looking the same as when he’d killed him and the same as when he’d saved him from his memories. He’s surrounded by red flowers the way he forever is in V’s childhood memories, but not the right kind, and V idly thinks his dreams could be more exact.

(But V himself is also not exactly Dante’s brother, is he now?)

“What do you want from me?” V asks his own figment of imagination. He knows what Griffon would say at him now.

Dante shrugs. “You tell me. We’re in your dream, Vergil.”

V looks at his hands: leather fingerless gloves over strong hands, a turquoise sleeve with bright embroidering extending past his wrist. He looks to the left and finds the Yamato tied at his waist, beautiful and whole in her scabbard. He takes her in his hand, relieved.

In this dream, he is himself. In this dream, the nightmares never happened. In this dream, he’s not weaker than Dante is.

Vergil grins. “What do we always do, Dante?”

Dante draws his sword. “The family way, eh?”

Vergil moves as light and as fast as he always could, before, and he runs the Yamato through Dante’s chest, all the way to the hilt. Dante chokes on his own blood. It’s a beautiful sight, only ruined by the fact that Dante didn’t even try to dodge the hit.

Luckily, Vergil didn’t aim for Dante’s heart. He’d never done that and never will risk it. 

Not even in a dream. 

“Predictable,” Dante whispers, and puts his bloodied hands over Vergil’s own heart.

V opens his eyes to see Shadow circling him and Griffon perched next to him, standing watch. His body aches from being curled in one position for too long, and for a few, long moments, V can’t shake the sensation of Dante’s touch off his skin.

Little brother will never just leave him be.

***

V hates the very fact of his own existence. He’s born out of self-hatred and weakness, so it stands to a reason that he’s bearing both; a human tumour cut out of a perfect demonic body, a parasite unable to function on his own while his host, now free, only grows in power. 

Out of options, V does what he once promised himself he’d never do: he asks Dante for help. He’s sure little brother is delighted at this, at Vergil _needing_ him.

It’s like Vergil can only ever win with Dante in a dream, and one that doesn’t even matter: not like the dream that was reality when he fought Nightmare. In the heart of his nightmare, Dante saved him, and V despises him for it. In real life, he’d granted him freedom from Mundus, something Vergil was too weak to achieve himself.

Like V can never be enough, like he can never protect himself, like he always has to hope others will love him enough to want to protect him. 

(_Love_, as if.)

Looking at Dante, V _wants_ to stab his cane through his brother’s heart and watch him cry, but he’s all too aware that he’s not able to hurt Dante physically (he’d never been able to do it before, either, if he’s honest with himself, not in a way that would stay—though it hadn’t been for a lack of power). 

In his frail, human skin, he tries another way. 

He kisses Dante, sweetly and gently like he’d never done when he was still was wholly himself. The way Dante chases his mouth is gratifying, but V pushes his cane between them, the handle of it pressed against Dante’s throat.

“Will killing me be easier, now that you have experience?”

Dante’s eyes glow red and he snarls, his teeth too long and too sharp as he gets in V’s face, his fingers extending into claws.

V can’t lie: he’s terrified. Like this, he’s helpless. His demons can’t stand up against a Son of Sparda. But there was a flash of anguish in Dante’s eyes before his demon looked at V, grief and guilt hiding in his expression. V doesn’t step back, though he’s almost shivering against the overwhelming sensation of Dante’s power all around them, and he’s sure Dante can _smell_ his fear. He’s not at Dante’s mercy here, despite the appearances.

“Go on,” he taunts. “Start with me, then. Completing it by killing my demon should be easy, no?”

Immediately, Dante’s fully human again, human and mastered by his own emotions. “Fuck you, Vergil.”

_Bang_, V thinks, like the vision of his little brother saving him from his past can hear him.

***

Malphas’ trap extends around him, a dream that isn’t: V is getting familiar with the experience. He’s also getting absolutely fucking sick of it.

He’s in what feels like a cave, but he can’t glimpse the ceiling to it, surrounded by stalagmites shining with low, cold light. There are no clear paths, no obvious way out nor forward. V hates it, being forced into another’s power again, his mind not really his own. 

“Lost, older brother?”

_Of course_. Of course it’s Dante. Who else?

He walks to V from the darkness extending around them, insouciant in his movements, strolling forward lazily like he’s on an afternoon walk in the rose garden behind their house.

But their house had burnt and the roses with it, and this Dante isn’t a child. He’s a man older than V feels, the one V sent on a mission to kill the other part of his mission; not the young adult who’d killed Nelo Angelo without ever uttering Vergil’s real name.

Is it Malphas’ magic, V wonders, or is this Dante just his memories of his brother, or maybe is he that part of Dante’s soul that dwells in Vergil that the Yamato had cut out of him along with the rest of his humanity?

(The one thing V is _glad_ for; that he’s not separated from Dante even in this way—and another hateful fact of his existence at the same time.)

“Remember when we were young? I’d get lost, and you’d always bring me back home.”

This is true. Dante had no sense of direction as a child, forever running off, distracted by one thing or another, leaving Vergil to find him in the woods or in the fields and lead him back, their hands laced closely together. Sometimes, when Dante was too tired, Vergil carried him, aware that as an older brother, he had to keep Dante safe.

He wanted to protect Dante for all of his life. Even in Mundus’ torture, he never said anything about his brother. Even when he didn’t know his name, he recognised Dante.

Dante never cared as much.

“_How sweet I roam'd from field to field, And tasted all the summer's pride,_” V recites like a reminder to himself. Look at him now, lost in a spell or a dream. 

“What do you want, little brother?” he asks. 

“The question is, what do _you_ want?” Dante asks back.

Great many things, V thinks bitterly, but right now he could do with the strength to finish his journey. It’s looking about as likely as Dante ever stopping to pester him.

“You’re my brother,” Dante says when V doesn’t answer him. “Let me help.”

Fuck, is V really this pathetic? That he wants sympathy from a Dante who’s not even _real_?

(That he wants sympathy from the man who’d killed him.)

“_Leave me alone_,” V grits out. 

But Dante only steps closer. It’s better when he saves him or mocks him, at least then V can hate him, and now . . . 

He misses his own killer, his twin who he’d lost too many years ago to count. His brother, for whom V is no longer his ideal reflection nor an equal. 

Of course Dante only runs from him, when they meet in reality.

Dante wraps his arms around V in a hug, radiating warmth and safety: everything V should not feel in an embrace of a powerful demon like him. But Dante wouldn’t harm him, not like this—he would love and protect V, forever, and V should stay—

_Ah_, and here’s the trap.

V has a lot of experience in denying himself what he wants, so it’s not difficult to reject his oldest dream (Mundus had tried that, had created Dante’s clones to offer Vergil safety if only he’d submitted, like Vergil was not only weak, but asinine, too, to fall for this particular trick).

His fingers tighten around his cane as he prepares himself. He hopes Dante won’t realise, because he surely will fight him, but instead Dante just smiles at him, bright and inviting. “Do it. It’s okay. I’ll stay anyway.”

V stabs his cane through the both of them; Dante’s heart and his own, an injury that should kill V if it were real and that Dante shouldn’t even notice. But Dante’s arms spasm around him and then are gone: his silhouette slowly scatters into nothing more than ruby light, merging back under V’s skin and into his soul.

He doesn’t feel whole again—that much is impossible—but he does feel inexplicably better.

V wakes up, free from the spell, stronger and somehow invigorated. Perhaps he’ll be able to take the final steps that will lead him to face his other self, now.

Oh, but how he hates that _Dante_ is the one who gives him strength. 

**Author's Note:**

> This final scene is inspired by neonthrones' wonderful idea!
> 
> This fic also has a [twitter post](https://twitter.com/tonytears/status/1162513411403603968).


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